Anonymous Maintaining DDoS Fire On ICO

Anonymous is continuing to attack the Information Commissioner's Office website since it initially began a DDoS assault at the weekend.

We reported yesterday morning that the site was back up and running, but ZDNet noted that later in the afternoon, it was down once again.

The ICO website still has a message regarding site disruption on its front page, which has now added a helpline phone number. It says: "We're sorry that some users may have had problems accessing our site over the past few days. This was due to an attack to our site. The website itself contains no sensitive information and was not damaged.

"We will continue to try and keep our website available to all our users. Our helpline is available on 0303 123 1113 or 01625 545745 between 9am and 5pm."

Not that you'll be able to see the helpline number if the site is down... but you can always scribble it somewhere, just in case.

The hacktivist collective has targeted the site as part of the protest against the Leveson Inquiry, further citing the ICO's lax policing of data breaches.

The "ATeam", a UK branch of Anonymous, says it's using a botnet of some 75,000 computers to fire off the DDoS volleys and flood the server with traffic. While the site is currently up as of writing this piece, we expect further attacks will likely continue today.

A spokesman for the ICO told ZDNet: "We are looking into the attacks, and how we can prevent such attacks in the future. At the moment we are considering our options [concerning reporting the attacks to law enforcement]."